The present invention relates to a method for placing a receptacle, such as a bottle containing a liquid of interest, in a device for sampling the liquid. It also relates to a sampling device for the application of the placing method.
This invention is particularly useful for receptacles containing liquid samples which may be dangerous, such as:                biological substances,        marking substances (fluorescent, chromogenic, radioactive, etc.) which may be associated with biological substances,        rinsing solutions,        magnetic particles in solution.        
Such recipients are generally used in automatic in vitro diagnostic systems for analyzing various parameters or biological substances which are intrinsically dangerous for the user, and may consist wholly or partially of:                viruses (hepatitis B, hepatitis C, AIDS, etc.),        pathogenic bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, etc.),        antibodies or antigens,        nucleic acid sequences (essentially RNA and DNA).        
Such automatic systems are particularly clearly described in patent applications WO-A-00/16075 and EP-A-0 837 331. The prior art thus generally consists of receptacles in the form of bottles. These bottles are positioned vertically, in such a way that it is difficult for the sampling means to recover all the liquid of interest contained in each bottle. This quantity of liquid which remains in the bottle is therefore a source of potential contamination for the use of the automatic diagnostic system equipped in this way. Furthermore, said user is obliged to move each receptacle into place until the sampling means associated with it are properly positioned; to achieve this, it is generally necessary to snap or screw each bottle into place with respect to the device for sampling said liquid of interest, which may give rise to splashes which are also a source of contamination.
The object of the present invention is to respond to the drawbacks of the prior art as described above, by proposing a placing method and a device for applying this method which are simple and can easily be automated, but which, when said device is manual, considerably reduce the risks of contamination for the user.